Dairy is scary. The public are waking up to the darkest part of farming - Chas Newkey-Burden | The Guardian (UK)

Photographs of industrial rows of cramped pens,
each imprisoning a solitary calf, will shock those who still believe in
the fairytale of the pastoral dairy farm, where blushing maidens milk
smiling cows. Welfare legislation says that calves should only be held
in solitary pens until they are eight weeks old, but Animal Equality
claims that the battery calves it photographed at Grange Dairy in Dorset
are up to six months old – too large for their hutches– and say that
some have grazes on their backs. But trading standard officers say there
is no evidence of any breach of animal welfare requirements. Marks
& Spencer, which sells milk from the farm, said it was
“disappointed” to see the report, but it has refused to drop the
supplier.
Upsetting as the story is, what happens elsewhere in the dairy industry amounts to systematic cruelty. In reality, the daily practices of most dairy farms
are more distressing than those of meat production. A mother cow only
produces milk when she gets pregnant. So, starting from the age of 15
months, she will usually be artificially inseminated. Farmers
mechanically draw semen from a bull, and then force the female cow into a
narrow trap, known as a “cattle crush”, where they will brutally impregnate her.

Dairy is proving to be a vulnerable spot for the entire slaughter racket

When she gives birth, her calf will typically be removed within 36
hours, so the farmers can steal and sell you the milk that is meant for
her baby. Wildlife experts say that a strong bond between cow and calf
is formed quickly after birth. Following that callous separation, the
mother will bellow and scream for days, wondering where her baby is. The answer depends on the gender of the calf. If male, he will probably either be shot and tossed into a bin,
or sold to be raised for veal, which delays his death by just a matter
of months. But if the calf is female, she will usually be prepared for
her own entry into dairy production, where she will face the same cycle
of hell that her mother is trapped in: forced impregnation, the theft of
her baby, and a return to the cattle crush two or three months later.
For at least six months of the year, she will often be confined
inside dark sheds. But a growing number of dairy farms in Britain use a “zero-grazing system” in which cows spend their entire lives indoors, in increasingly intensive structures.
A dairy cow is often pumped with antibiotics and hormones so she
produces an unnatural amount of milk. Under normal circumstances, she
would generally only have a maximum of two litres of milk in her udder
at any one time, but rapacious farmers may force her to carry 20 litres
or more. Her udder becomes so heavy that it makes her lame and she often
develops an agonising infection called mastitis. The strain this puts
on her body means she is exhausted by the age of five. Soon, her milk
yield will no longer be considered profitable. Or she might simply
collapse under the agony of it all. Either way, she will be dragged off
by a tractor, squeezed into a cramped truck, and driven to the
slaughterhouse, to be killed and turned into burgers or baby food. Her
throat slit after five sad and torturous years – under natural
circumstances she could have lived to 25.

The public is steadily waking up to the fact that the reality of milk
production is not a matter of trivial imperfections.’ Photograph: Animal
Equality/PA

Dairy is proving to be a vulnerable spot for the entire slaughter
racket. The public is steadily waking up to the fact that the reality of
milk production is not a matter of trivial imperfections, of concern
only to idealist vegans, but in fact the most dark and wicked part of
all farming. And delicious, non-dairy milk, cheese and dessert
alternatives are now widely available, so as people learn the truth it
is easy for them to ditch dairy for good. In January, Sainsbury’s
reported that sales of its new own-brand vegan cheeses were 300% greater than it had anticipated.

Smaller businesses are also evolving. The Fields Beneath cafe in
north London abruptly stopped offering cow’s milk last week, replacing
it with vegan alternatives like oat, almond and soy milk. It posted a notice in its window, explaining that it took the move after watching the powerful five-minute YouTube video entitled Dairy Is Scary.
The notice added: “We didn’t think it was either.” And Ice Shack, an
ice-cream and dessert parlour in Manchester, is transforming into a fully vegan business next week.
The industry is starting to panic. David Dobbin, chairman of Dairy UK, fears a “demographic time bomb”
as young people increasingly shun milk. Only 10 years ago, there were
about 21,000 dairy farms in England, Scotland and Wales. Industry
analysts believe there will be fewer than 5,000 left by 2026. The National Farmers Union’s dairy spokesman Michael Oakes said on Monday that the message of anti-dairy campaigners is “not going away”. He called for “positive promotion” of the industry.
They’ll have their work cut out. Even the planet’s most shameless and
gifted spin doctors would find it hard to put a positive angle on the
brutal reality of most dairy farms.

27 Mar 2017

I got the below email off Neale today. I checked the Easons website and I will be getting notified when it is in stock. I might buy it somewhere else if I haven't heard back from them for a few days. This is the next book I will be reading. I don't believe everything I read in Neale's books but I have all his other main books and find them very interesting. I really hope that his latest book has answers to the questions I have been asking myself for the last while. What's more I hope that a lot more people read his books.

An important note from Neale:

I have had a brand new Conversation with God

My
dear friends...When my last conversation with God came through over ten
years ago, I thought it would be the final such dialogue I would ever
publish. I was wrong.

Seven months ago, on August 2, I was
awakened in the middle of the night with a brand new CwG moving through
me. I threw back the covers, raced to my keyboard, and began a totally
unanticipated interaction. Conversations with God-Book 4: Awaken the Species
(which is what I have titled the book) contains a stunning, if not to
say jaw-dropping, revelation, and a striking, direct from Divinity
invitation to everyone who finds their way to this new and unexpected
dialogue. The book was released today.

Picking up where Book 3 in
the original Conversations with God Trilogy left off almost 20 years
ago, this just published discourse invites all of us to join in a global
undertaking and contains startling revelations about our individual
futures, as well as the collective future of everyone on our planet. It
may surprise you and awaken you with its content --- which is exactly
what this interaction with humanity was intended to do. I earnestly hope you will bring these new words into your life.